Beeminder will help you keep your resolutions

I make many resolutions, and keep hardly any on the long term, which I think is very common. For about two years, I have been using Beeminder, a tool developed by the recently mentioned Dan Reeves, which is fantastic for number-inclined people (which includes most readers of this blog, presumably).

For example, I have a stack of academic papers to read which keeps growing. I have set the (modest) goal to read at least 2 of those papers per week on average, i.e. that I read 104 papers in a year; others might want to lose 10 kg by July, or get their number of unread e-mails back to 0 by next month. Usually, such resolutions have the following effect: during the first couple of weeks, I will indeed read 2 papers/week; in week 3, I’ll read only 1, but think that I’ll catch up the next week, which I never do; by week 4, I’ve got so much catching up to do that I might as well give up on the resolution.

Beeminder helps check that I stay on track constantly. On any given day, I must be on the “yellow brick road” which leads to my goal, and which allows some leeway based on the variance of data entered up until now. A big goal in the far future is thus transformed into a small goal in the near future. In the graph below, the number at the top left is the number of days I have before I must read another paper to avoid derailing.

If you need an extra incentive, you can pledge money, which is only charged in you fail at your goal (you are allowed to fail your goal once for free; if you fail and want to start again, you need to promise to pay should you fail a second time).

This is all explained in further detail on Beeminder’s blog. Apart from academic papers to read, I am reading how much I swim, boring admin tasks, and several other goals I would not keep otherwise, and I have found Beeminder to be a great way to achieve these goals. Give it a try!